Dan Hodges is a former Labour Party and GMB trade union official, and has managed numerous independent political campaigns. He writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation. You can read Dan's recent work here

It’s Labour, not Ed Miliband, leading the march towards oblivion

The party has only itself to blame for the strategic and tactical shambles in opposition (Photo: Eddie Mulholland)

Nothing is sticking to David Cameron. He’s been driven into third place in the European elections. He was forced into a grovelling apology over Andy Coulson. His attempt to block Jean-Claude Juncker ended in abject failure. And yet the week has closed with the Conservative Party edging close to parity with Labour in the polls.

Meanwhile, everything is sticking to Ed Miliband. On Tuesday, he unveiled a new flagship policy of devolving £30 billion of business rates to the regions. And promptly saw the owner of the factory chosen to host the announcement condemn it as a “bureaucratic nightmare”. On Wednesday, he derailed his own “Business Week” by deciding to launch an NHS summer offensive instead. And on Thursday he awoke to find his policy chief Jon Cruddas bemoaning how his leader was constantly being “gamed out” by the Tories. If the Prime Minister is made of Teflon, Mr Miliband appears to have been constructed from Velcro.

“What can we do about Ed?” one Labour insider asked me as the chaos unfolded. To which my answer was: “You’ll have to start from scratch.”

Most of the blame for Labour’s travails is being placed at Mr Miliband’s door. He’s weird. He’s weak. He’s indecisive. Much of the criticism is valid. It’s criticism I’ve frequently levelled at him myself. But this week has finally convinced me that Mr Miliband is merely the curator of Labour’s tribulations, not the sole architect of them.

Yes, Labour has an Ed Miliband problem. But Ed Miliband has a Labour problem as well.

Take the party’s abortive attempt to reach out to the business community. Labour’s famous “prawn cocktail” offensive was launched in the early Nineties, by Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Mo Mowlam. That’s a quarter of a century ago. On Thursday, I was talking to a senior businessman. He explained to me how he couldn’t even get an audience with Miliband or his senior advisers. It wasn’t that they didn’t see eye to eye. They couldn’t make eye contact at all.

And why is that? Why, 25 years after Labour first embraced the City, is Mr Miliband so wary of even breaking bread with British business?

Well, it’s because he thinks his party will come for him over it. He’s terrified that a new narrative will be constructed that says he’s not being true to himself, or his party’s values, and has allowed his head to be turned by treacherous New Labour fifth columnists.

And he’s right. His party will come for him. That’s because the idea that (at least since the 2008 crash) the business community is a feral animal that the state must tame isn’t a Miliband construct. It’s what the Labour Party now genuinely believes.

Take another example: Labour’s deficit – or chasm – on economic competence. Mr Miliband no longer talks about the macro-economy. Why? Partly because he believes the Tories now own the issue. But also because his party doesn’t want him to. Or feel he needs to.

Labour activists, strategists and MPs long ago bought into the fiction the economy didn’t matter. If they just “reframed the debate”, they wouldn’t need an economic policy at all. No need for cuts. No need for hard choices. Freeze gas bills, call Cameron a toff, and Bob’s your uncle.

It’s true Mr Miliband has always chosen the path of least internal resistance. But that’s the path his party has ushered him down.

It’s what I meant by Labour needing to start from scratch. Everything learnt during the dark days of the Eighties and the Nineties has been forgotten. Everything. It’s like the process of modernisation never happened.

Should we move to the Left or the Centre? Can we win on social issues alone? Should we assault the establishment, or engage with it? Old battles, supposedly fought and won, will have to be fought all over again.

That’s not because of Mr Miliband’s accession. It’s because of Labour’s collective regression.

Ed Miliband didn’t launch a coup. He’s been mandated to march his troops to the edge of the political abyss. Everything he’s done has been with the support, or at least acquiescence, of the wider Labour movement. OK, that movement may finally be waking up to the electoral price about to be exacted for the tactical and strategic choices that have been made. But those choices were collective ones.

There is no point Labour asking itself, “What can we do about Ed?” The Labour Party needs to be asking itself what it can do about the Labour Party.

If it wants to sit in its comfort zone, and luxuriate in opposition rather than confront the hard yards of government, then it really doesn’t matter who the Labour leader is. If the party genuinely thinks it can win an election without constructive engagement with business, or a hard-headed economic plan, fine. By all means strip off Ed Miliband’s Velcro suit and hand it to Chuka Umunna, or Yvette Cooper or Andy Burnham.

But Labour will lose. And it will be Labour that loses, not just its leader.